Mobile, Direct Search and More: What Lies Ahead for SEO in 2016?

Over the past few years, Google has been rolling out with a number of updates to improve the results of their search results and as an SEO consultant, I find it very important to monitor and gauge the direction of Google so that I can provide my clients with the best service.

And we can all agree SEO is much harder today than it has been in the past.

But with their constant updates and modifications to their algorithm, it’s very important to stay on top of the latest SEO trends and with 2016 around the corner, and it’s also important to keep these in mind as you go about building out new links and websites.

Below, I share with you some of the biggest changes you can expect for SEO in the remainder of 2016.

Increase Emphasis on the Mobile Audience

Back in April of 2015, Google rolled out with an update which targeted sites that weren’t mobile friendly. This resulted in two slightly different algorithms from Google: one for desktop searches and one for mobile searches.

Now today, the mobile search results have never been more different than desktop rankings.

With the continued rise of mobile Internet usage, there’s going to be an ever greater importance for making sure that your websites are optimized for mobile devices.

More Direct Search Answers

If you use Google quite often, you would’ve probably noticed that often times, you probably won’t even need to click on a link for an answer because your question is answered right there on the search results page.

For example, with the search for the Toronto Raptors.

And these are the results I got.

With all this information, there’s a very low chance I’ll need to click on anything to get more information.

Importance of Inner Page Links

As an SEO, it’s a common practice to build tons of links to the one page you’re trying to rank for.

However, Google is starting to favor larger websites which prove to have overall authority on a topic. In fact, if you look through the Search Quality Guidelines, you’ll find that Google even said that themselves.

However, to raise a domain's overall authority, you can’t just build inner pages without link building.

You’ll need to build links to those inner pages as well.

Crack Downs on Unnatural Link Practices

Over the past few years, Google has made major leaps in trying to kill the black hat community. One of the worst updates was back in September of 2014 where many people using private blog networks reported that many of their domains were deindexed.

In the years to come, we can only expect more attacks on the grey and black hat SEO world as they strive to increase the quality of their search results.

Conclusion

In 2016, the big take away is to think quality over quantity. Make your site appear to be a trusted resource in the search engines. Prove to Google that you can authentically provide a solution to someone’s need better than someone else. Get links from authoritative websites in your industry and create relevant, high quality content on your website and you’ll be on the right path to succeeding in 2016.